The Best UX/UI Tools for Designers in 2018

The demand for UI/UX designers has never been higher, and it continues to grow. This is especially true for UX designers as user experience is a design area that features some truly unique challenges.

Do UX design and the high salaries that go with it appeal to you? If yes, things will be much easier for you if you have the right tools and understand what they can do, and why they do it.

These tools include a wide range of products. From prototyping and interactive design to team collaboration and user testing. Some UX tools focus on specific tasks. Others are all-encompassing.

There is a sheer number of UI/UX tools on the market. This can make searching for the best ones an overwhelming experience. We’ve done the searching for you. 7 top tools have been selected for this post, any one of which can make your design work a whole lot easier.

1. Mason

Designing mockups and prototypes to share with team members or to hand off to developers is one approach to website and app design, and a popular one at that.

Mason has a better idea, though. Using the Mason platform, you design software and digital features using a simple visual interface. Your designs, as you see them in the builder, can be deployed directly into production with pixel-perfect accuracy. No more handing off a prototype only to have the “real thing” miss the mark. What you build, you see, in real-time.

As useful as mockups and prototypes can often be, they represent overhead costs, not to mention the time it takes to build them. QA inspection is also required to verify that prototype features and functions along with those described in the design documentation, have been scrupulously adhered to during production. With Mason, the QA inspection process is not necessary and can therefore be bypassed, saving even more time and money.

Mason is different, perhaps even radical, but you will easily and quickly become accustomed to its straightforward approach to digital design.

2. Overflow

User flow diagramming is a must part of the product design cycle, but is often skipped. Why? Because the entire user flow diagramming process is fragmented, taking too long to complete as it involves many disconnected tools and a lot of manual work. A process that becomes even more exhausting for designers when they want to keep their design flows in sync with their design changes.

But here comes a new tool to the rescue. Overflow, the first-ever user flow diagramming tool created specifically for designers. As a powerful cross-platform tool that integrates seamlessly with the most popular design tools, it helps designers quickly turn their designs into playable user flow diagrams. This way, designers can effectively communicate their work, while fully engaging their audience with an interactive user flow presentation.

With Overflow, designers can design, present, share & print their user flows to get valuable feedback, all in one place. Overflow is currently available in private beta. Check out the above link for early access.

3. UXPin

UXPin enables your team to create development-ready designs better and faster than ever before. This UI/UX tool is ideal for small-to-medium design teams, while its Design Systems solution addresses the needs of mid-to-large teams and organizations.

You’ll enjoy all the power of the design editor to build UI elements and components and fuse them together, along with the necessary controls to ensure website or app visual consistency.

With UXPin, you can create interactive prototypes at any fidelity level you need, from design concept sharing to user testing. This design and prototyping platform will fully support your team collaboration activities as well.

You’ll find that one of UXPin’s most popular features is the ability to produce a development-ready design without any need for accompanying manual documentation. Development data and specs automatically accompany your designs. There’s even an inspect tool to verify your design specs have been adhered to.

4. PowerMockup

Combine the presentation-building features of PowerPoint with PowerMockup’s extensive library of shapes and design elements, and you have a platform on which you can create interactive website mockups and apps.

It’s no longer necessary for PowerPoint users to seek out a different platform to share website design information with others. Just select images from the PowerMockup library and drop them onto a PowerPoint slide. PowerPoint’s animation and slider features take care of the rest.

5. Creately

Creately is a diagramming and collaboration software for designers and UX teams. Its design aids include mind-mapping and flowcharting tools, wireframing tools, unified modeling language (UML) tools, diagrams for information architecture design like site maps, as well as a selection of professionally-designed templates.

UX teams can connect their information architecture diagrams, user flows, brainstorming boards and wireframes together to get the full picture of the UX design process with Creately. The inbuilt real-time collaboration and contextual commenting help teams work across locations and timezones with amazing ease.

6. Fluid UI

One of the best design approaches to creating websites and apps that feature top-quality UI’s is the use of prototypes. Designers, distributed design teams, and project managers will find Fluid ID to be an extremely useful prototyping tool, thanks to its large libraries of desktop, Android, and iOS design components.

Fluid UI takes care of your team’s collaboration requirements as well, including interactive video presentations and live chat.

7. Visual Inspector

This time-saving UI tool allows you to visually resolve UI issues on live websites and share what needs to be done, or what you have done, with stakeholders in real time.

No coding is necessary when using Visual Inspector, and it can be used with any type of website, e.g., HTML, WordPress, and others. Take advantage of the current offer of Lifetime Access to this remarkable tool for $49.

Conclusion

Which tool or tools best fit your UI/UX design needs? There are seven excellent tools to choose from. Each of them comes with its own set of unique features to make your workflow smoother and faster.

You can follow a rapid prototyping approach, or make maximum use of user flow diagrams. Or, perhaps, you might work at the design element level. Maybe you are merely looking to for a better way of collaborating with team members. Either way, there’s something here for you.

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